Former Gov. Kenny Guinn remembered as a uniter

Jul. 24, 2010

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AT A GLANCE

ARRANGEMENTSo A viewing is scheduled at 7 p.m. Monday at St. Joseph, Husband of Mary Catholic Church in Las Vegas.

o A funeral Mass is scheduled there at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

o In lieu of flowers or other gifts, former first lady Dema Guinn and her family are asking those who wish to honor the memory of Gov. Kenny Guinn to send a donation to the Kenny C. Guinn Memorial Millennium Scholarship Fund to help pay tuition costs for Nevada students.

o All donations will be kept in a separate account to be used to help pay tuition costs associated with the Guinn Millennium Scholarship program.

In 1999, Guinn pushed the Legislature to approve his Millennium Scholarship program, which uses tobacco company settlement funds to help Nevada students pay for their college costs at state schools.

Source: Associated Press, family representatives

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Former Gov. Kenny Guinn, who died Thursday at age 73 after falling from his home’s roof, is remembered as a politician and private-sector executive who could unite people of opposing views.

He brought people together to solve problems as a bank president and superintendent of the Clark County School District. He took on the role of interim president at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas when the city and university were polarized over a controversy connected with the school’s basketball program.

As a Republican Nevada governor, however, Guinn did not unite everybody in his Nevada Republican Party.

Guinn pushed for a then-state record $833 million tax increase during the 2003 Legislature. Guinn, using a mixture of charm and cajoling, eventually won, although his proposal for a gross receipts tax, onerous to businesses with slim profit margins, was killed.

That tax battle, pitting Republican against Republican, did not start the rift between conservatives and moderates in the Nevada GOP, experts said, but it certainly widened it.

“There were a lot of people who disapproved of it,” former U.S. Rep. Barbara Vucanovich, R-Reno, said of the tax hike.

“The facture has never healed,” said conservative blogger and activist Chuck Muth of Las Vegas. “Guinn was replaced by (Jim) Gibbons. So you had the conservatives who were mad at Guinn. Then you had the reverse. You had Gibbons who was conservative as governor who had all of these problems with (state Sen. Bill) Raggio and the moderate Republicans.

“The rift is still there,” Muth said. “Everybody’s just wearing different shoes.”

Although Guinn helped convince Democrats and moderate Republicans of the need, he didn’t convince the conservative band of 15 Republicans in the Assembly, who wanted a tax hike no greater than $700 million. The Mean 15, as they were called by admiring conservatives, held up passage of the tax hike through a summer marathon that included a Guinn vs. Legislature lawsuit, a Nevada Supreme Court decision and a three special sessions in Carson City.

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The Mean 15 members still carry clout with Republicans. They included U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle, Gibbons’ Deputy Chief of Staff Lynn Hettrick and Ron Knecht, a member of the Nevada Board of Regents.

Guinn saw the full tax increase as necessary to improve the public school system and quality of life for Nevada’s poor and disabled.

“He was not trying to unite the party,” Vucanovich said. “He was doing what he though was right.”

‘Role model’Guinn will be remembered as a Republican who put “getting things done” above politics, even if it hurt his popularity with conservatives.

“He is, at one level, the role model of public service,” said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and a registered Republican.

Guinn’s leadership in the 2003 tax battle was probably the key reason why he was criticized as a RINO (Republican in Name Only) in some circles, some recall.It’s an unfair tag for a man who stood up for his convictions, experts said.

“The bad knock he gets is that he was a bad Republican,” Muth said. “He was not. He was not a RINO. He was a moderate Republican, and he just had a different perspective on the proper role of government from what movement conservatives like I have. It is a philosophical disagreement.”Guinn did a lot for the Republican Party, Muth said.

“Kenny Guinn went out and raised money for Republican candidates, he helped them get elected,” Muth said. “He gave money to the party. I don’t think the man ever turned down anybody who asked for his help when he was governor, any Republican. He was a good Republican.”

Rebate program Guinn governed when the state’s economy was running smoothly. After that tax increase, Nevada amassed a tax surplus.

Guinn oversaw a $300 million vehicle registration fee rebate program. in 2005. It was an effort to appease still-angry factions in the GOP, experts recalled.

“I remember the governor saying at the time, had he had his own preferences, he might have wanted to redirect that to the rainy-day fund,” said Fred Lokken, a political science professor at Truckee Meadows Community College and a former registered Republican who is now nonpartisan. “But he knew what he had to do was to try to appease (conservatives) because they were still winching from the tax hike.”

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Popular with the masses, the rebate backfired in some conservative circles.“Government is supposed to run like a business, and many businesses carry forward cash balances,” Herzik said. “If we would have saved that $300 million, it would not have solved all our (current) problems but, it would have been nice to have. But that’s 20/20 hindsight. But at the time, I thought it was stupid because you were giving back money based on car registration, which was not one of the taxes that was increased.”

Other leading state politicians of the era defend the rebate.

“You can’t second-guess that,” said U.S. Rep Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, who was the state Senate Minority Leader at the time. “Everything plays out in different ways. He thought that it was the right thing to do. Now that ($300 million) sounds like a lot. but today the state is more than $3 billion short, so I don’t think it is helpful to look back at that.”

Stood up to party politics

Some Democrats and Republicans look back with admiration that Guinn withstood the blowback of the tax increase.

“His passion and zeal to save the state led to the (2003) explosion,” said Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, now a candidate for state Senate. Leslie recalls the GOP reaction as, “over the top.”

“It still reverberates today,” she said. “In elections after that, taxes became a forbidden word. You could not even utter it. Today we say 'identifying additional revenues.’ We never say taxes, and I think it can be traced back to that.

“Gov. Guinn, in my view, was under tremendous pressure, but he truly believed it ($833 million tax package) was the right thing to do, and that is why so many people of both parties admire him,” Leslie said.

Some see Guinn as holding the Republican Party together better than anyone who followed in leadership roles.

“Moderates saw Guinn as someone who could find the middle ground,” Lokken said. “What really led to the undoing of the party was the Gibbons’ election (for governor). That seems to coincide with the collapse of the Republican Party, Sue Lowden’s election (as state GOP chair), Chuck Muth trying to steer from the side and everybody kind of battling for the philosophy of the Republican Party.”